Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it orsubmit it hereand I will get to it (maybe) next week.--------------------------------This week we’re talking more food, Nazi haircuts and Shakespeare. Then, everyone's favorite subject...Life Insurance!!!

Submitted by:@Gunboss68(2 questions)Which food is more triggering? Velveeta and shells, spinach pancakes, or pineapple on pizza?This one is easy. First of all, there is absolutely nothing “triggering” about Velveeta and shells, unless we are talking about triggering my love of macaroni and cheese. Cuz that shit is delicious. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t better Mac & Cheese available, either in restaurants or at home (Wegmans Homestyle Cheese Sauce and Cavatappi or STFU), but don’t any of you dare try and Velveeta shame me. And you know you love it, too.I find pineapple on pizza to be an affront to the Founders’ vision of America and a crime against freedom, liberty and human decency, but I understand that people eat it. There’s no accounting for taste. It’s gross and fruits other than Tomatoes have no business being on a pizza. Certainly not fruits that grow on bushes (because pineapples don’t grow on trees, which I learned a couple of weeks ago and still can’t fully wrap my head around).Getting away from the idea of putting bush fruit onto pizza, I’m going to make another controversial food statement (controversial only in that so many of you are so wrong and don’t know it): Pizza is too often over-topped. Pizza should be crust, sauce, cheese and maybe one topping. That’s it. Any more than that and you are just telling me that you don’t really like pizza. It’s not unlike nouveau cheeseburgers that have four kinds of cheese and caramelized onions and bacon and pork belly and Russian dressing and pickles and fried onions. If all of those toppings aren’t detracting from your cheeseburger, then it was a shitty cheeseburger to begin with. The pizza world has too many abominations with 42 kinds of meat or half the contents of your grandmother’s garden piled on top of a now soggy crust.Pepperoni? That’s a pizza. Mushroom? Delicious. Heck, I think you can get away with two vegetables, like peppers and onions or spinach and mushrooms. I’m not opposed to putting a little flair on your pie. But Pizza Hut sells a Super Supreme that has nine toppings. Domino’s Grand Supreme is the same. NINE TOPPINGS!!! I don’t even want nine toppings when I go through an ice cream sundae bar, and I sure don’t want it on my pizza. Toppings are a shroud of shame relied on by inferior pizza-makers.Also, Deep Dish pizza is a sign that Chicagoans are simply superior to the rest of you. Come at me, bro.Spinach pancakes, though, are so far beyond the pale (there is a joke about Green pancakes and the British occupation of Ireland in there...learn your history, or you will miss all of my good jokes, people!!!) that I am having a hard time thinking of anything funny about them. Obviously, something this diabolical could only have come from the deformed mind ofa Clinton.{Full disclosure...Chelsea says she did it so her daughter would eat spinach. I think any parent can sympathize with the idea of doing anything necessary to get your kids to eat healthy foods. But this is the Internet and we make fun of people. It’s what we do.}It just makes no sense...I genuinely like Spinach...it tastes fine, it is really good for you, and if cartoons are to be believed, it provides seamen with super-human strength at key moments. But, it’s a health food, and we eat it because of its health benefits. If all you are doing is pureeing it and putting it into a cake made of flour and sugar that you will immediately eat with syrup and/or whipped cream, you’re just wasting time. It’d be like Ben and Jerry’s making a Kale & Salmon ice cream...just putting something healthy in there doesn’t undo the terrible health effects of all of the heavy cream and sugar. Also, ew, I just thought about putting fish in ice cream. Time to move on…If I make an ass of myself on TV insulting someone’s haircut, how do I apologize correctly? Asking for a jackass.Early this week, Samantha Bee ran apiece making fun of peopleat CPAC, during which she mocked the haircut of an attendee as bearing a striking resemblance to that of a Nazi. Turns out that the guy in question is, in fact, a cancer patient and the hair was a result of his treatments. Oops!I’m not going to criticize (“Apple”) Bee for her joke...she is a comedian, and she tells jokes and those jokes are going to be biting and sometimes offensive. If you’ve seen the gentleman in question, his hair doesn’t look like one would normally associate with a cancer patient, and I can’t see where the writers or producers would have any idea of the guys illness. In other words, it was a somewhat honest mistake.I do have a couple of problems, though. First, it’s a form of joke-telling rooted in a lazy modern narrative… everyone’s a Nazi these days. It’s a somewhat dangerous rhetorical tool, as it diminishes the meaning of the word, the historical crimes of real Nazis and the ideology of today’s actual aspiring Nazis. Bill Maher talked before the election about the left’s habit (the right is not innocent, either) of villainizing its political opponents, painting “honorable men with whom we have legitimate disagreements” as monsters, such that their cries of a real-life monster (in his example, he was talking about Trump) fall on deaf ears. Aesop wrote a story about this, too...it involved a boy who cried wolf, and a weak-hamstringed football player who fought the wolf and saved the boy!But she’s welcome to tell lazy jokes, I guess. I don’t watch the show because I don’t find it that funny, but obviously someone does - I think the ratings have been very good. My bigger issue, though, is with her response. Once she found out that she had mocked a cancer patient’s haircut, she felt the need to issue an extraordinarily meek apology, not for mocking him, but for the passive crime of “him being offended”. So, “I’m not sorry that I did something so callous, I am sorry only that you were offended by it.”So, to answer your question, were I the PR team, I’d simply cop to my embarrassing mistake and go with an apology along the lines of “I am deeply sorry for mistaking the results of Mr. So-and-so’s illness for a fashion statement. I certainly had no intention of mocking his illness and would never dream of making light of the results of cancer. We tried to make a light-hearted joke and I’m embarrassed to have made such a mistake. I can not apologize enough to him, his family or anyone affected by cancer.” Then make the same apology on the show along with maybe a free plug for the American Cancer Society or St. Jude’s or some other cause.At least act like you are sorry. If you’re not going to be sorry, then you may as well double down and just go full-offensive with something like “Is it a coincidence that cancer makes you look like a Nazi?” or “I don’t feel bad about offending Republicans. I’m glad they have cancer.” THAT would have been a response!!!Submitted by:@brunus_cutisIf all the world's a stage, where does the audience sit?Well, if we are taking Shakespeare to his literal end (or, if we are litorally getting our Shakespearean feet wet…) then we need to pay attention to the entire quote, which answers your question. “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players” makes it clear that there is no audience because everyone is in the play. Or, maybe the audience is made up of animals...I’m not totally sure. Maybe he was just talking about the movie Sing! and all of the people are really animals or something...this is getting kinda wild.Regardless, I know where you’re sitting...you and your rich friends like country club member@cdpayne79and private jet flying@molrattyare gonna get the good seats in theLord’s Roomswhile the rest of us fight just to get into the standing room balcony for a glimpse of the show. Since you probably built the balcony and did your standard corner-cutting pocket-padding workmanship it’s bound to collapse killing hundreds of anonymous proles that you didn’t much care about anyway. I hope you’re happy!!!Submitted by: Will G. T.Do I have enough life insurance?Good question, Will. I shook up the magic 8 ball, and all signs point to ‘Yes’, so you’re probably good to never worry about this again!I think I may need a little more information to answer this question specifically for you...some small things like “How much life insurance do you actually have?”In a broader sense, though, most Americans are probably under-insured, especially parents of children and really, really especially parents of multiple young children. Insurance needs are highly individualized based on your income, expenses, long-term liabilities and responsibilities, and so forth, but I can walk through some of the ideas.I’ll start with myself. I am 34, and I have two six year olds, a mortgage, a job and a husband. Until very recently, I had a dependent sister. Outside of any estate or tax strategies, the basic question in regards to life insurance is: “If I got hit by a bus, who currently relies on me financially that might need support? And how much?”. My husband would now be a single parent of two...what financial resources would he need to raise the girls? He’d need a nanny, obviously, or some childcare support at least. And he would no longer have my income to help pay the mortgage, tuition, the bills and to fund savings goals. His income and our current assets are enough that the loss of my income wouldn’t be crippling, but there are still things to take care of so as to not harm the living standards of him and the girls too much.Now let’s imagine another anonymous example that I am definitely not pulling from people you know: single guy, early thirties, good job and no mortgage. I’d question why he needs any life insurance at all. Maybe a small policy to cover funeral expenses, but he isn’t leaving any liabilities or placing a financial burden on his loved ones. Frankly, the policy provided through his employer is probably more than enough. The same goes for retirees without any dependent children or remaining debts. Sure, the people you leave behind will miss you...but it’s not really clear that your absence is going to cause a huge financial hardship.Move on the example #3...single Mom, 30-ish, young child (let’s assume there is no father in the picture), and now it gets trickier. The most important question here is related to care for the child. Someone needs to become the guardian for the child, which is a massive undertaking even before you consider the financial requirements. Whether it is the deceased parents or sibling or a friend, it is important to think about leaving behind the financial resources to ease the burden as much as possible. Which also means taking into account the resources of the guardian (if they live in a large house in a nice town with good schools, you don’t need to factor in the need to move, but if the person lives in a one-bedroom in a retirement community, they are going to need a different place to live.) In other words...your results may vary;-)Let’s say that the child is 5, and he or she is going to live with your brother who already has two kids of similar age in a four bedroom house. So, you are looking at, more or less, 15 years of dependency, but no need to relocate. Kids, however, are expensive...they eat, they wear clothes, they play sports, etc. Even without any massive one-time expenses for your brother, he’s probably going to need maybe $10,000 annually to support the new child. To simplify the math, we’re just going to use that figure, multiple it by the 15 years and get $150,000. Let’s also say that you want to see a college or other savings fund for your child to get him or her off on the right foot and throw in another $100,000 on top of that and we get to $250,000. Honestly, that is probably the low end for a reasonable insurance coverage for the parent of a young child.Let’s take another example of someone you definitely don’t know and think of a highly-compensated woman with a stay at home husband and two young kids. Let’s also imagine that they just bought their permanent home in a leafy suburb for, say $1,000,000 with a $750,000 mortgage and they live a lifestyle commensurate with her income. If she dies of a cheese curd overdose, she leaves behind a pretty big financial hole. This is especially true if her husband’s earnings potential has been hurt by being out of the workforce. But unlike our example above, we now have to worry about a mortgage, and paying off the mortgage is just a starting point here. The husband is also going to need basic living expenses for a family of three, funding for his own retirement and savings for the kids education. It is pretty easy to see where that number gets to $4-$5 million pretty quickly.Back to your question, then, Willy, you’ll need to give me more information before I can really answer. BUT...I am going to digress and tackle another dreadfully boring subject: insurance products.Insurance companies, like a lot of financial service providers, are quick to add a host of features, bells and whistles to their products. In almost every case, as the product gets more expensive, adds more features and gets more complicated, it becomes a worse deal for the consumer. If you need life insurance and you need it only to account for obligations you’d like to take care of if you die, then you should be thinking strictly about basic, plain vanilla term insurance. I know the agent will sell you on the benefits of Whole Life and index-adjusted investment components and cash values and yada, yada, yada...don’t listen. None of it is good for you if all you need is insurance. If you want an investment product, buy and investment product, don’t try to mix it with insurance. The agent will push because he or she gets paid more for selling more esoteric products (guess why they get paid more?) but you don’t need it. Simple is better.Now that I have put you all to sleep...see you next week!

Something you didn't mention in the insurance discussion but should be brought up is life insurance for your children. Will doesn't mention if he has children, but if he's thinking of life insurance for himself, then there's a good chance he's a father. As someone who has lost a child I can tell you that having life insurance for your children is very helpful. We were fortunate that my (now ex) wife had $10k of life insurance on our daughter through her insurance from work. We weren't even aware of it. At the time I was unemployed and she was teaching at a low paying private school. Paying for a funeral was not easy, but we were fortunate. It's definitely worth the expense to buy life insurance for your children. Unfortunately, you never know what may happen.

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